The answer to this question is simple. Yes. Whether or not your website gets better or worse positioning depends on the SEO techniques that you practice. If your website was built to "beat" the ever changing Google algorithm to get better rankings, then your site will be worse off. If your website content was created for human readers (and not bots) then your website position should remain intact or even improve.

The Penguin update is trying to weed out the garbage in the internet world i.e. websites that are built entirely on "spun" content. Article spinning is the practice of randomly generating content with relevant keywords, but the article does not make sense when you read it. Article spinning is used to throw keywords and insert links in order to promote the links embedded in the article.

With the latest update, Google not only weeded out websites with mostly spun content but also websites that have link profiles entirely built on shady websites.